{"id":3293,"date":"2010-12-06T23:00:31","date_gmt":"2010-12-07T03:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/?p=3293"},"modified":"2011-03-14T15:19:21","modified_gmt":"2011-03-14T19:19:21","slug":"my-thoughts-on-the-western-gull-which-do-you-like-best-images","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/2010\/12\/06\/my-thoughts-on-the-western-gull-which-do-you-like-best-images\/","title":{"rendered":"My Thoughts on the Western Gull “Which Do You Like Best?” Images"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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This image of a very worn first winter Western Gull was created with the Canon 70-200mm f\/2.8L IS II lens with the 2X II teleconverter (hand held at 400mm) and the EOS-1D Mark IV. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +1 stop: 1\/1250 sec. at f\/7.1 set manually and confirmed by histogram check. AI Servo central sensor rear focus AF and re-compose. <\/p>\n

When I am creating portraits of static birds with my favorite new set up, I always support the lens in one way or another when hand holding. Here I sat on a rock and braced my left arm on my left knee. In addition to ensuring a sharp image I was able to create a more intimate photo with the pleasing background that I wanted (including the white strip of breaking surf at the top) by getting low. <\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

My Thoughts on the Western Gull “Which Do You Like Best?” Images<\/h2>\n

Though I like all three images (else I would not have posted them here :)), the first is my fave. I am a sucker for wing stretches and for distant blue ocean backgrounds. I was also down low when I created this image. <\/p>\n

Note that that in the second image, the one of the bird landing, I was standing. As a result, the background, i.e., the Pacific Ocean, was actually much closer to the subject than in the wing stretch image where I was much lower. Thus the background in the first image was softer, sweeter, and more out of focus than the background in the second image.<\/p>\n

I love the third image for its abstract look, but feel that I could have created a much more powerful photograph had I not been lazy about mounting my flash when I left the car in the pre-dawn light. The way to go with this image would have been to underexpose the ambient and light the bird with the flash. This would have yielded a much darker pink\/blue background and brought the bird to life. Next time I will not be so lazy \ud83d\ude42 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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This is the original of the second image, the one of the landing gull. As you can see, I cropped it from our left, covered the remaining part of the closest bird with a Quick Mask of ocean background, added canvas to the top, and repaired the clipped wing tip. <\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

The techniques that I used to process the image are included in Ditigal Basics<\/a> and Robert O’Toole’s APTATS I<\/a>, both PDFs sent via e-mail. <\/p>\n

Shopper’s Guide<\/h2>\n

Here is a list of the gear that I used to create the two images in this post. <\/p>\n

Canon 70-200mm f\/2.8L IS II lens<\/a>
\nCanon EF Teleconverter 2X II<\/a>
\nCanon EOS-1D Mark IV professional digital camera body<\/a><\/p>\n

If you are considering the purchase of a major piece of photographic gear be it a new camera, a long lens, a tripod or a head, or some accessories be sure to check out our complete Shopper’s Guide.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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This image of a very worn first winter Western Gull was created with the Canon 70-200mm f\/2.8L IS II lens with the 2X II teleconverter (hand held at 400mm) and the EOS-1D Mark IV. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +1 stop: 1\/1250 sec. at f\/7.1 set manually and confirmed by histogram check. AI Servo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[89,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-89","category-misc","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}